Journal Chacham's Journal: Question: URL monitoring 5
I was asked by a not very technical friend, who was asked by another, to help them track where their son is going on the Internet. They are not technical at all, but they suspect their son may be visiting inappropriate websites, and if so, they want to talk to him, but first they want to capture the urls surreptitiously to see if their concerns are valid.
Well, truthfully, i do not know what to suggest. I searched and found OpenDNS which seems to have some services that allow URL monitoring (no timestamp thopugh). What would you suggest?
Depends on what the device is (Score:2)
For Android, I use Screen Time for this. Records timestamps, time in app, and URL, and reports them to the parental remote control ap on my phone.
Now if I can only get it to load consistently on my son's NABI.
TransParent Proxy (Score:2)
Well, the technical way is http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/TransparentProxy.html [tldp.org] ... which is the way we used to do things back in the IP Masquerading days when we had a Linux box be the dialup gateway for the rest of our LAN. I suppose I'm a bit upset that this isn't a standard feature of most Wifi gateways these days. It's on my to-do list of things to do to monitor my kids when we're not around, and Squid has some nice reporting front-ends, but ultimately it'll just tell you where your kids are going and not
Re: (Score:1)
I've got to recommend this to people who are not very technical. My guess is their Windows box is connected directly to a cable modem.
The OpenDNS idea is not to filter, but tor record.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, well, the non-technical way is to just move the computer to the family room where internet use can be monitored, and lock it when the parents aren't around. Not saying it snidely... it's actually pretty good parenting.
Maybe the next level is teaching them about Ctrl-H so they can view the browser history... assuming the kids haven't figured out incognito mode yet. But that should be a good start until they're ready for the next step in the arms race. But maybe after that try installing ntop for Windo
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I'm told the kid is comfortable with the computer. Also, he is a teenager, so he likely gets around when his parents are not.
They suspect that he might be having an issue. They want to verify before taking any action.
I might give more advice later, but first step is to help them check out if their fears are true.